GERMAN CHANCELLOR Angela Merkel has insisted her coalition government is stable despite the sixth departure in as many months of a senior political ally from her ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Hamburg mayor Ole von Beust announced on Sunday he was standing down as government head in Germany’s second city hours before the party lost a referendum on school reform.
“I regret but respect this step by Mr von Beust,” said Dr Merkel yesterday. “And I see good chances for the CDU in the future and in Hamburg.”
After decades of Social Democrat rule, the 55-year-old Mr von Beust took back Hamburg for the CDU in 2001 and then, in a second term, signed a coalition deal with the Green Party.
The departure of Mr von Beust, the CDU’s most senior openly gay politician, is a setback to Dr Merkel on at least two fronts.
Firstly, he was a key figure in her long-term strategy for the CDU to open the party to centrist, middle-class urban voters.
Secondly, his walkout, apparently for personal reasons, has cast doubt on future CDU alliances with the Greens, particularly on a federal level. Already the Hamburg Greens are mulling pulling out of power, which would leave Dr Merkel even further from a law-making majority in the upper house. The latest resignation prompted Der Spiegel to comment: “It seems Merkel’s party has become afflicted with a case of itchy feet.” Senior CDU figures expressed concern yesterday at the rush for the door.
In May, Dr Merkel lost her most senior conservative political figure when Roland Koch, governor of Hesse, threw in the towel saying “there’s more to life than politics”.
The party had already lost a senior right-wing conservative months earlier with the departure to the European Commission of Baden Württemberg governor Günther Oettinger.
When Dr Merkel appointed Christian Wulff, the CDU governor of Lower Saxony, as president last month, she sidelined a rival but robbed the CDU of a moderate conservative.
May’s disastrous state election in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) ousted the CDU from power and ended the career of CDU governor Jürgen Rüttgers. Without him, the CDU is lacking a senior representative of the more centrist, social wing of the party.
The CDU’s eastern vote is far from certain after the resignation of Dieter Althaus, a senior CDU figure and leader of Thuringia, after he inadvertently killed a woman on a ski slope.
“The loss of leader figures is remarkable in the last while and seems to confirm talk of an erosion in the CDU at federal level,” said Prof Michael Greven, political scientist at the University of Hamburg.
“As new, inexperienced players come on, this is a critical phase for Dr Merkel.”
CDU support has dropped to 33 per cent, one point ahead of the opposition Social Democrats.